1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to medical equipment and more particularly to an apparatus for colonic lavage.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the treatment of colitis and other ailments caused by impaction and/or infection of the colon, it has long been known that lavaging of the colon provides beneficial results, and that colonic lavaging mechanisms or systems must provide certain controls such as water temperature and pressure regulating devices, and others, to insure for the comfort and safety of a patient.
Examples of the prior art mechanisms and systems employed in colonic lavage may be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,157,756, 2,257,072, 2,420,586, 3,771,522 and 3,823,714. In general, these prior art mechanisms more or less provide the necessary control devices; however, the techniques employed and the design of the equipment itself has resulted in excessively bulky mechanisms which are difficult to set up, hard to use, cannot be considered as being truly portable, and are not precision devices as far as some of the control functions are concerned.
In most of the prior art mechanisms known to me, the lavaging mechanism is connected to a building's water supply plumbing system to obtain hot and cold water under pressure which is passed through a mixing valve to achieve water temperature control. The water is then delivered, by means of the water pressure, to an overhead tank or other reservoir means, and gravity is employed to detemine the pressure of the water delivered to a speculum. This design feature of the elevated reservoir, dictates that the prior art lavaging mechanisms be bulky in that a predetermined distance between the patient and the reservoir must be established. In some of the prior art systems, such as that fully disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,771,522, the water reservoir is mounted on a wall approximately three and one-half feet above the patient, and the other control devices, such as the above mentioned water mixing valve, are also attached to the same wall for convenience reasons and to keep the system's plumbing lines to a reasonable length.
In other lavaging systems, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,420,586, the above described elevated water reservoir and control devices are mounted within a cabinet, and the entire cabinet is hung on a wall or other vertical surface. It will be seen that in either of the above described typical systems, the lavaging mechanisms, in addition to being bulky, are not truly portable and cannot be readily set up for use and subsequently dismantled for storage until needed again. The need for mounting the prior art lavaging mechanisms on a wall at a specific height, for all intents and purposes, makes these mechanisms a more or less permanent installation, and due to the cost and short supply of medical space in general and treatment rooms in particular, the lack of portable and/or easily set up medical equipment is a decided disadvantage.
The elevated reservoir method of controlling water pressure to the speculum is, at best, a poor control device in that it is difficult if not impossible, to adjust the pressure to suit particular situations and patients. Raising and lowering of either the reservoir or the patient will, of course, change the water pressure, but this can only be described as a hit or miss type of control in that no degree of accuracy can be expected.
The above briefly described prior art lavaging systems will be seen to additionally include other controls such as: means for injecting oxygen into the water delivered to the speculum, means for injecting medicinal fluids into that same water, and some of the prior art units have provided viewing tubes by which the operator may visually inspect the matter extracted from the patient. Such a multiplicity of controls and other devices which normally include water flow controls and mixing valves, temperature gages, oxygen pressure regulators and switching devices, and the like, must be constantly monitored by the machine's operator, and this has not always been an easy job in that the controls, gages, etc. are scattered at various locations about the system or machanism.
To the best of my knowledge, no prior art lavaging mechanism has been devised which, in addition to patient considerations, has considered the operator with regard to ease of equipment set up and usage. Further, no prior art mechanism known to me has provided a means for easily collecting a sample or specimen of the matter extracted from a patient for subsequent laboratory analysis.
Therefore, a need exists for a new and improved colonic lavaging apparatus which overcomes some of the shortcomings and drawbacks of the prior art.